I ran, not knowing what was waiting for me at the end of the road, just as my parents, Osborne and Mary Potter had done when they left the island of Anegada for America, way back when.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When the solution is simple, God is answering.\u00a0 I believe it was a smart man named Albert Einstein who said that.\u00a0 For me, it was my daughter Cheryl who came up with a solution to my problem.\u00a0 If she has not, I would probably be dead today or have a quality of life so low it wouldn\u2019t matter if I was alive.<\/p>\n
She shifted from foot to foot as she figured out how to tell me what she needed to tell me.\u00a0 I never took my eyes off her face.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026I want you to run.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then I laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease, Mommy.\u00a0 Something has to be done about you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fall is cross-country running season.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean that you run across America.\u00a0 Cross-country just means running outdoors, usually 3.1 miles.\u00a0 It is very different from running indoors.\u00a0 When doing cross-country, you can find yourself running through grass, over a log, and in the rain, with your shoes squishing through mud.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know any of this when I ran my first race.\u00a0 It was September 1982, and I sixty-seven years old.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t care whether I won the race or not.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t care whether I survived it or not.\u00a0 The only reason I was in.\u00a0 The only reason I was in it was to satisfy my youngest daughter, Cheryl.<\/p>\n
I was a few short years away from my seventieth birthday, and I didn\u2019t feel like I needed to be on guard anymore, like I had to try to protect my sons from the evils of the street.\u00a0 I was supposed to be living a life of ease during my retirement.\u00a0 I was supposed to be secure in the fact that my children were going to be just fine.\u00a0 I had watch over them when they needed me to there, and now they would take care of themselves, right?<\/p>\n
Wrong.\u00a0 Two of them were brutally murdered, leaving me to wonder what I could have done differently so that they would have made better choices.<\/p>\n
As I grappled with the loss. It occurred to me that no parent is ever really safe.\u00a0 We can never really relax and let out guard down, can we?<\/p>\n
I was retired and no longer an employee of any company, so there was no way for me to lose myself in my work after the tragedies by doing every minute of overtime that I could get my hands on.<\/p>\n
I tried to remember the agony of losing my mother many years ago and how I got through that.\u00a0 If I could remember the way I got through that pain, would it save me now?\u00a0 There were no answers, and my thoughts just went round and round.\u00a0 I had known a lot of people who had passed on, but thinking about how I managed to move on after those losses did not help me at all.\u00a0 As much as I loved all of those people, I did not give birth to them.\u00a0 This was different.\u00a0 This was some type of hell that I couldn\u2019t come to grips with.<\/p>\n
It seemed like every time I close my eyes, I saw one of both of my boys.\u00a0 They were babies in their carriages, which I pushed through the streets of Harlem.\u00a0 The they were toddlers, the three of us in a homeless shelter until I could find us a home.\u00a0 Then they were running for exercise at the armory, competing with each other and laughing real loud and free.\u00a0 They were sitting in church with me as I warned them not to squirm.<\/p>\n
Grown-up Donald drawing remarkable good portraits of people, places, and moods.<\/p>\n
Grown-up Charles at the store, stirring pots while the aroma of the food he was cooking wafted around the room.<\/p>\n
Both of them dancing in the living room while their sisters looked on, happy that their older brothers were having a good time.<\/p>\n
When Cheryl showed up at my door on the day of the race, I told her to forget the plan because I didn\u2019t have any sneakers.\u00a0 She pulled a pair out of her bag.<\/p>\n
I squeezed one foot inside.\u00a0 \u201cIt feels too snug.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheryl\u2019s lips tightened and she reached back into her bag.\u00a0 \u201cTry these.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had come with two pairs of sneakers!<\/p>\n
The look on her face told me that she had come prepared for every objection that I might make.\u00a0 It never dawned on her that I might not be able to run 3.1 miles (about sixty-two city blocks) and finish the race.\u00a0 Cheryl probably couldn\u2019t afford to let herself think like that because she was determined to save my life.<\/p>\n
The race was called the Big Red 5K Mini Run, and it was being held in Brooklyn, New York.\u00a0 Big Red<\/em> was a black newspaper, and they managed to get more than two hundred to run.\u00a0 There were many people aged from fifteen to sixty.\u00a0 I was the oldest and probably most reluctant participant.\u00a0 But I ran that first race for my daughter.\u00a0 Just so she would stop looking so worried and scared.<\/p>\n I ran, not knowing what was waiting for me at the end of the road, just as my parents, Osborne and Mary Potter had done when they left the island of Anegada for America, way back when.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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